


A Thousand Kisses

by Arwen88



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Classical References, Fluff, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-14 13:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29047281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arwen88/pseuds/Arwen88
Summary: A late night in Hardigny brings Carwood to the room where Ron is dealing with paperwork, but even with a comfortable bed, he can’t find his peace. Late night chats have Ron showing a side of himself that Carwood had not expected.
Relationships: Carwood Lipton/Ronald Speirs
Comments: 3
Kudos: 27





	A Thousand Kisses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Howling_Harpy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Howling_Harpy/gifts).



> Thanks to Laura for betareading this!  
> For Harpy, hoping she likes it <3
> 
> Fluff ahead, be prepared!

Hardigny was cold, wet, and mostly made of destroyed little houses when Second Battalion reached it.

The officers managed to find a dingy little house for themselves that had windows that were still whole and a roof that didn’t leak too much.

Ron had managed to secure himself a little room that, even if it couldn’t contain more than a bed and a little table, at least had a door that could be closed to keep some of the cold out. He couldn’t help his grimace when Carwood tried leaning against the small table he was using to work on paperwork, only for the wood to creak and complain under the added weight.

Carwood almost jumped off of it, and Ron simply waved him towards the bed he clearly wasn’t using.

“Just sit on the bed. No need for you to stay there waiting. And it’s not like you can find another bed out there.”

Carwood looked from him and the papers he had brought to the bed, doing his best not to show how desperately he wished he could sleep in a real bed. Ron rolled his eyes at the man that had rapidly become a good friend to him, mindful of how he had had to almost twist his arm to get him to share a bed with him that night Carwood had looked just about to fall asleep on his feet.

“If I’m here working you might as well use that, Lip.”

Carwood sighed, swaying on his feet even as he didn’t tear his eyes from the slim mattress and the blanket on top of it. “It’s your bed, though. It’s not right to take the bed from an officer.”

Ron snorted, still busy writing his report to Winters. “Are we there again? Just get on the bed, Lip. You need it,” he added, throwing him a glance.

Even under the light of his lamp he could see how pale Carwood looked. If they weren’t in such a desperate need for men like him, Ron might have wanted to send him to the nearest hospital since the Bois Jacques, when he had first noticed how exhausted and sickly he looked.

Finally he stopped complaining and sat on the mattress, unaware of how Ron couldn’t keep his eyes off him at hearing him let out a sigh full of relief with his eyes closed, looking just about ready to fall asleep as he lay down.

Ron went back to his job, expecting to hear snores fill up the room, but instead he watched from the corner of his eye as Carwood tried pulling the blanket one way and the other over him, how he rolled on his side and then on the other one before lying once more on his back. A couple minutes later Carwood seemed to lose any hope to fall asleep right away and crossed his arms over the blanket, maybe trying to keep it close to his body, maybe simply to feel less vulnerable if an attack was to come.

Ron didn’t comment on it, letting the silence stretch between them.

While the rest of Easy would have probably paid good money just for the chance to not spend more time than needed with Ron, Carwood had never looked wary of him, and he was probably just one of a handful of men out there that actually enjoyed spending time with him.

Maybe Ed, out there in third platoon, or Dick, who Ron had known since their days in OCS.

But they certainly didn’t feel as sweet to him as Carwood, and he surely wouldn’t have let them use his bed that way.

He stilled his pen for a moment at the sound of voices outside his room, trying to gauge if he might have been interrupted, if something was happening, but the men proceeded down the hallway and Ron turned his eyes on the small pot he had put over his small camp stove to try and make some hot coffee.

When he turned his eyes over to Carwood on the bed once more, wondering if he might have been interested in a cup of coffee once the water was boiling, he found the man looking back at him.

He raised an eyebrow at his friend, cracking an amused smile. “What?”

God knew if Ron had had to learn first hand that Carwood sometimes needed a little push before he felt confident enough to speak his mind around an officer, even when the officer in question was his friend.

Carwood cleared his throat, shrugging with a wry smile. “Was just wondering, about Tertius… do they teach you about the Romans in OCS?”

Ron snorted a chuckle, shaking his head while turning back to his paperwork, trying to put them in order. “No, that’s just a hobby of mine.”

“Learning about the Romans?” he asked with a good dose of disbelief, as if it sounded impossible to make the idea fit together with that of Ron being so focused on being a good soldier.

“Yes.” He shrugged. “I like the classic world: Romans, Greeks. They were incredible soldiers and strategists, and what they managed with their armies is almost shocking if you consider the means available to them at the time. And then there’s obviously their literature and all they managed to let us know of their times and life.”

Carwood chuckled, looking warmly at him. “Wouldn’t have taken you for that kind of man.”

“Why not?” He leaned back, resting his back against the back of his chair to give him all his attention. “I think I’m exactly the kind of man that is more likely to enjoy a good war poem.” He chuckled, letting his mind wander to his books and what he had learned from them.

His smile turned wry as realization hit not for the first time that what he had read in those poems and what he had been taught about warfare later on hadn’t done much to prepare him for the war that he had found himself thrown into.

“At least in those times the sacrifice of a man still meant something,” he commented darkly. 

It was almost instinctive to turn his eyes on Carwood then, wondering for the briefest moment if he had talked too much, revealed thoughts that should have stayed hidden deep inside of him. But his friend was looking back at him with wide eyes full of surprise and interest and Ron found himself smiling with fondness at him.

“Ever heard of Hector and Andromache?”

Carwood shook his head and uncrossed his arms from around his chest and brought one under his head to better watch him, apparently unaware of how clear it was that he was only then starting to relax.

“Hector of the shining helm, he was called. He was Troy’s greatest warrior, King Priam’s first-born son. Even if he was undefeated on the battlefield - the proof of which was his shining helm - all he wished for was to leave the war and stay with his family. His wife begged that of him, but he knew he couldn’t. Not even if it was what he wanted too, because he had to maintain his reputation among his men and the rest of the city, because he knew that if he were to stop fighting and the city were to fall, his beloved family and everything he held dear to him was going to be destroyed and suffer unspeakable pains.” He couldn’t help the smallest smile at seeing how he had Carwood’s rapt attention.

His eyes fell over the speckles of blood and mud that covered his friend’s face and neck, and he slowly got up from his chair to search for a clean handkerchief.

“And yet, when his wife Andromache stepped up to him with tears in her eyes, a maiden following with his son Astyanax in her arms, he was ready to strip himself of his protections, literally and metaphorically to show his son his true self. That’s a beautiful passage, when the kid is scared of his shiny helm - the very proof that he is the scariest out on the battlefield, that he has never hesitated to take the life of his enemies, that he is the hero of the city, never touched by an enemy’s weapon - and he does not hesitate to take that helm off and show his son what is underneath, fully knowing his son loved him and would recognize the person under the persona.”

Ron stepped around his small makeshift desk to dip his handkerchief in the pot of boiling water before he added the coffee grains to it, leaving it to brew as he made his way towards the bed.

“Their poems were so… true to their real selves. Unapologetically human.” He lifted his eyebrows, looking down at Carwood laying on the bed until his friend startled out of his reveries and shifted aside, his pale cheeks flushed red as Ron sat beside him. “They had no trouble in speaking their minds, no fear of showing their emotions to the world, in a way that humanity has never felt free to do since.”

He gently took Carwood’s chin between his fingers, making him turn to rub the wet handkerchief to his skin. He pretended not to hear the hitch in his friend’s breath, his fingers steady as he cleaned him.

“Reading their poems makes you believe that maybe humanity could very well go back to such an openness of mind in the future that would allow every kind of literature, no matter how crass, or silly, or obscene it might be, mixing even true love with the horrors of war.

Carwood did nothing to stop him, staring up at him with his lips parted and his fingers entwined over his chest. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down when Ron moved his fingers south to undo the first buttons of his shirt, enough to be able to clean the smudges of someone else’s blood from his neck.

“They teach you that there can still be love out there even for a man that has given all his life and himself to the war.”

“What else do they teach?” Carwood asked in a faint voice.

Ron lifted his gaze to meet Carwood’s own and slowly he brushed his thumb to his friend’s parted lips, emboldened by the hope he could see in them. “They teach you how hurtful love can be, how it can tear you apart when the object of your love doesn’t see you. And then again, how to unashamedly ask for what you desire.”

He brushed the back of his fingers to Carwood’s pulse point to hear the rabbity beat of his heart. “Take Catullo, for example.”

Carwood wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue, swallowing and inhaling sharply. “What did they say?”

Ron brushed his hands to Carwood’s shoulders as he moved them to the bed, bracketing his friend’s body as he leaned over him. “To live and love, to value the rumors of old men barely a penny.” He dropped his gaze over Carwood’s lips before he searched his eyes once more, his own heart beating hard in his chest.

“Give me a thousand kisses, then a hundred, then another thousand, then again a hundred, then right away another thousand, and then a hundred,” he quoted with a smile tugging at his lips in answer to the one he watched spread over Carwood’s lips.

“Then, when we have collected many thousands, we’ll mix them up so as not to know how many they were and so that no malevolent people could jinx us knowing there have been so many kisses.”

Carwood let out a joyous laugh at that, reaching up to take Ron’s face in his hands, and he gladly followed when Carwood pulled him down for a kiss, chaste that it was with them both unable to stop smiling at each other.

**Author's Note:**

> Hector and Andromache appear in Homer's Iliad, while the poem by Catullo is the Carme V.
> 
> I didn't like completely the translations I found in English so I decided to translate the quote myself, trying to mantain the meaning and lyrical flow of it.


End file.
